Saturday, December 31, 2011

A very
short blog today. The following is from Stephen Kinzer’s book Overthrow:

“’Mission
accomplished,’ General Javier Palacios, who led the assault reported to his
superiors by radio at 2:45. ‘Moneda taken. President [Allende] dead.'”

“Moneda” is
La Moneda, the “presidential palace” in Chile. [We have a “White House” but
foreigners have “presidential palaces,” which was by the way one of the first
names of the “White House.”] And this message was sent at the end of a coup and
an assassination that was fomented by the US of A.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Here is a link to an article in the
New York Times on Ron Paul and his tendency to endorse what are labeled “conspiracy
theories,” along with other charges thrown in to show that Paul is obviously
unfit to be president. Of course, coming from the Times, it is obvious that
Paul is unacceptable because he would not preserve the status quo or the
current economic and political arrangements, which the Times is heavily
invested in.

But more to the point, this opinion
confirms what Noam Chomsky has argued for some time now, viz., that the phrase “conspiracy
theory” is applied to anything that even hints at an institutional analysis of
our current situation. Of course, some institutional analyses have a
conspiratorial aspect to them, such as, the CIA killed Kennedy. [I have learned
only recently that these theories were propagated by the Soviet Union after
Kennedy’s assassination. See Brothers in
Arms, a book about the Kennedy and the Castro brothers.] But of course we
Americans are far more able to think that, say, Oswald was a lunatic than that
his killing of Kennedy had anything to do with the facts that the Kennedys were
trying to kill Castro. Almost anything that even hints at institutional
analysis is marginalized and replaced by some inanity like bin Laden attacked
the United States because he “hates us.” You know, like he was a well armed 13
year old girl.

Ron Paul is unique in that he is
the only candidate, including Obama, who is willing to say that our
institutions are to blame for our troubles, whether the institution be the Fed
or the Department of Defense. And this makes him, of course, a kook and unfit
for the presidency. But, hell, by these standards Ike would be unfit if he were
to repeat his warnings about the “military-industrial complex.”

Friday, December 23, 2011

This a link
to an article sent to me by a friend and former colleague, which argues that
the demise or decline of the American empire will come much more quickly than
some like to think. I have two objections to this article.

First, it
seems to me to be a “liberal” version of fear-mongering. This is evident in the
assumption made throughout the article, an assumption never actually defended,
that the end of the American empire represents “decline” for the United States
and even bad news for the world. The latter assumption is, for the most part,
unspoken or is hidden in the article’s undergrowth, as it were. Also, it seems
simplistic to identify the beginning of the end of the empire with Bush’s war
in Iraq. More interesting to me, however, is the question of why this should be
seen as a “decline.” This could be a good thing. As I wrote to my friend, would
it be a bad thing if college athletics returned to a way of operating that was
less focused on “glory” and “greatness” and more on what are now called “student
athletes?” [Have you ever noticed that some labels become prominent just when
they no longer reflect reality? The change from calling it the “War Department”
to calling it “the Department of Defense” for example.]

Secondly,
this article reminded me of Orwell’s argument in his article, “James Burnham
and the Managerial Revolution” that the intelligentsia/manger types worship
power and that this comes across as a prejudice that current trends are bound
to continue into the future. So, if China and India are rising today, then they
will continue to rise tomorrow and into the future. Of course, they present the
past in the same way: If something happened, it had to happen because of “history”
or of the overwhelming importance of power in directing or controlling human
affairs. So, because the US Constitution was written and ratified, it had to
be. And this is how history is written for the most part. Orwell also suggests
that public opinion is not controlled by the same prejudice or, as he puts it,
the same “mental disease.” And this is so because “the public” knows the limits
of human power in controlling events. For example, it is the upper classes,
those with the most power, who most often abuse that power. Why? Because they
have been fooled into thinking that with power they can control events, can
control life. The middle and lower classes know better and, hence, are less
likely to violate what Orwell calls “the elementary rules” of life.

What we can
know is that the American empire will end – because all empires end. What we
cannot know is how this will happen or what might replace it.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Once
again, the Republican leadership has acted in a way that seems to make no
sense.At least, their actions make
little sense if one assumes that the goal of all political parties all the time
is to win elections. The action in question was that the Republicans in the
House of Representatives refused to accept a compromise that had been worked
out between the Democrats and the Republicans in the Senate to preserve the
payroll tax cut back so as not to increase taxes when doing so might endanger
“the recovery.” And the House Republicans did this even though the Democrats
had compromised, or allegedly had compromised, on certain issues such as that
of building a pipeline for oil that would transverse the nation. So it is fair
to ask: what is up?

I
feel pretty sure there is more to it than what appears below but it is,
nonetheless, worthwhile to put this argument forward. Namely, that the
leadership in the House [and to some extent in the Senate] is content to look
like obstructionists for a cause of doubtful worth if this result helps to
paint the insurgents in the Republican Party as extremists or uninterested in
governing. And this quotation from a Democratic congressman makes the point
rather sharply:

“We
are witnessing a pattern of Speaker Boehner walking away from bipartisan
compromises to kowtow to his extreme Tea Party wing of his
caucus,” Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, said in a
statement. “This is the latest example of the Tea Party Republicans sacrificing
the good of the country on the altar of extreme ideology.”

Now,
it is fair to ask why Speaker Boehner would feel the need to “kowtow” on “the
altar of extreme ideology?” After all, Boehner is in charge, is he not? His
position in the Congress is safe, is it not? Well, perhaps not so much as
people think. The Tea Partiers are, if not extremists, then at least
insurgents. As such they pose a threat to current leadership in the House,
whereas the Democrats do not. Even if the Republicans were to lose control of
the House, which seems unlikely, this would not mean that the current
leadership would lose control of the party. In fact, were the Republicans to
increase their numbers in the House, that might endanger the current leadership
insofar as there might be more Tea Partiers in the House who could then
displace Boehner and other Republicans who are not Tea Partiers.

Moreover,
the fact that a Democrat is being quoted here is interesting in that it points
to the “collusion” that exists, willy nilly, between the Democrats and the
Republican leadership. Both parties have an abiding interest in preserving the
status quo, that is, preserving the prevailing leadership of each party. And,
without even needing to meet or communicate, the two parties work together to
get this done. As a result the more things change, the more they remain the
same. C’est la vive.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

In the past
few days, there have been several opinion pieces about Newt Gingrich as the
“front-runner” for the Republican presidential nomination. The most interesting
of these have been written by columnists who are conservative Republicans, like
George Will and David Brooks. And it is fair to say that these columnists have
not been kind to Gingrich.

While this
is certainly justified, given Gingrich’s capacity for making outrageous
statements probably intended to draw attention to himself in the best tradition
of narcissism, it is interesting to me for what it reveals about the Republican
Party as a political institution. For these attacks on Gingrich remind us that
elections are not just contests between parties, such as the Republican and
Democratic parties, but that they are also contests for control of each party.
That is, along with and perhaps even controlling the battle between parties
there is a battle within each party for control of that party. It is this
battle that leads some to argue, as I have done here, that at times parties are
willing to lose elections, want to lose elections in order for some to preserve
their power within the party.

For
example, Massachusetts is said to be a “Democratic state,” that is, a state that
is controlled by the Democratic Party at the expense of the Republican Party.
Try as it might, the Republican Party cannot, it is said, win elections. Of
course, this is not true as evidenced by Mitt Romney being elected governor and
by Scott Brown being elected Senator. So, perhaps, the Republican Party or
those who control it are satisfied with the situation because to change it
would require that these people forego control of their party.

So, behind
these criticisms of Gingrich lies the fear by the likes of Will and Brooks that
if Gingrich wins, he will restructure the power arrangement within the
Republican Party, leaving those like Will and Brooks on the outside looking in,
as it were. Hence, they now have to point out Gingrich’s all-too-obvious flaws,
making him seem like an extremist or a whacko. There is nothing particularly
“conspiratorial” about this interpretation and it reveals that most often, as
Noam Chomsky likes to point out, any interpretation that is “institutional”
tends to be characterized as “conspiratorial.” This is a way of drawing our
attention away from any analysis that points in the direction of concluding
that it is the system, not those who temporarily occupy its positions of power,
which needs reform or changing.

And this
brings me to my second point regarding Gingrich, viz., that he has been
criticized for being overly ambitious. [See a column in the New York Times
today by Bruni for an example of this. See below for the link.] The argument is
that Gingrich is overly ambitious, which points away from the criticism,
endorsed once by none other than Abraham Lincoln [speech entitled “On the
Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions], that the system that was created
in 1787 by the “Founding Fathers” relied too heavily on ambition as it would be
the characteristic that animated the new political order. “Ambition must be
made to counteract ambition,” James Madison wrote in the 51st essay
of the Federalist. And Alexander
Hamilton in the Federalist pointed to
“the love of fame [as] the ruling passion of the noblest minds” and intimated
that this passion, this love of fame – a kind of “immortality” – would
characterize the men who would be drawn toward the presidency as moths were
drawn to flames. These men would, if allowed to, undertake “extensive and
arduous enterprises” in order to achieve this fame, perhaps even undertaking
such enterprises when the public good did not demand or justify them.

Now, it is
easy to see without looking too far that such a passion makes for an ambiguous
foundation of a decent political order or of a genuinely republican political
order. Human beings of great ambition are dangerous, as the opponents of the
new Constitution pointed out is different ways. Such human beings could, for example,
make a nation war like or as might be said today “imperialistic.” And a war
like nation must, as we are constantly being reminded these days, sacrifice its
liberties for the sake of its security. This is said with a frequency today
that underlines how easy it is to undermine a commitment to individual liberty
for the sake of creating a “great empire.” [Another phrase found in the Federalist.]

But if we
focus on Gingrich and his allegedly over the top ambition, we can and will
ignore the more basic question of whether our political system is defective in
ways that cut deeper than the defects of any particular candidate or incumbent.
And after we do this, we then will wonder why our elections don’t seem to
change anything, failing to recognize that they do change some things, just not
those that need most to be changed. And I would submit that until we come to a
realization that ambition is at best a “virtue” of ambiguous value, our
political system and our politicians will fail us, even while seeming to be
successful.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Some decent argument from Rand Paul on the Defense Authorization Act of 2012. "The Land of the Free" is quickly disappearing thanks to the likes of John McCain. It is sad.

"Sept. 11 didn’t succeed because we granted the terrorists due process.
The attacks did not succeed because al Qaeda was so formidable, but
because of human error. The Department of Defense withheld intelligence
from the FBI. No warrants were denied - the warrants weren’t requested.
The FBI failed to act on repeated pleas from its field agents, agents
who were in possession of a laptop with information that might have
prevented Sept. 11.

"These are not failures of laws. They are not failures of procedures.
They are failures of imperfect men in bloated bureaucracies. No amount
of liberty sacrificed on the altar of the state will ever change that.

"We should not have to sacrifice our liberty to be safe. We cannot allow
the rules to change to fit the whims of those in power. The rules, the
binding chains of our Constitution, were written so that it didn’t
matter who was in power. In fact, they were written to protect us and
our rights from those who hold power without good intentions. We are not
governed by saints or angels. Our Constitution allows for that. This
bill does not."

Monday, December 12, 2011

This is an email response I sent to a former colleague of mine who had difficulty understanding the argument for a different kind of politics then we currently pursue.

I am not sure what you asking or whether you are just trying to make a
joke out of my anti-federalism. So, I will respond as follows:
Anti-Federalism need not be about all the particular policies you list
here. It is, for me, a mindset, having little to do with policies. And
the mindset revolves around this issue: What is the more appropriate goal of
politics, greatness or goodness? [this is just one way of framing the
issues. But I think Socrates saw it this way. Athenian politics = the
pursuit of greatness and this was a disaster for the soul.] If the
appropriate end of politics is greatness, that is, national greatness,
as the progressives argued and as both liberals and conservatives today
accept, then my argument will make no sense to you or anyone else. And I
will not argue with you or anyone else because it is a waste of time.
However, if the choice between national greatness and goodness is an
open issue, that is, one worth considering, I will discuss it.

You know, Paul, JFK and his brother, RFK, pursued greatness [bullshit
like: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for
your country." Led to many, many deaths in Vietnam so they could make
sneakers for us now!] and a part of that pursuit involved trying to
cashier Castro and the Communists in Cuba. [This is my current interest.
If it isn't yours, so be it. It is mine.] And in the pursuit of Castro
they undertook to try to assassinate Castro and, guess what? Castro got
JFK first! It is reported that RFK, after the assassination, when alone
was heard to cry out, "Why? Why, God, why?" Well, Bobby, it is real
simple. Hey, you try to kill someone and they kill you first, this is
called justifiable homicide! One need not plumb the depths of some
divine plan to know why your brother was killed: He who lives by the
sword, dies by the sword. Just a little old fashioned justice coming
down. And we shouldn't forget that JFK had Diem assassinated only weeks
before he himself was assassinated. Hey, what goes around, comes around.
Or as Malcolm X said at the time of JFK's assassination: "The chickens
have come home to roost." Oh yeah! And Americans think that 9/11 was a
bolt from the blue! Hey, if you declare war on terrorists, as Reagan
did, then the terrorists have the right to kill you! That is why it is
called war!

We, in the U.S., have been pursuing a politics of greatness ever since
TR and Wilson and FDR and we have paid the price. "But it ain't really
hard to understand; if you're gonna dance you gotta pay the band." We
can go on, as we are doing, pursuing a politics of greatness, but we
will then go on paying the price, both domestically and abroad. The
pursuit of great wealth, which both the liberals and the conservatives
promise, only using different means, results in the creation of great
inequality and, therewith, justifications for that inequality - you
know, like people who attended Harvard are smarter than the rest of us
and deserve to have the power! Or that people like the Kennedy's are
better than the rest of us and deserve to have the power. Gee, JFK
fucked up gloriously, both in Cuba and Vietnam and now we have another
Harvard grad in the White House and he is fucking up! Surprise,
surprise!

To end this: There is a great essay by George Orwell you ought to read,
"James Burnham and Managerial Revolution." You can google it and find
it. Orwell saw through the bullshit of elitism, the belief that managers
are capable, more capable than ordinary people. Orwell's defense of
public opinion is mind boggling and persuasive. It is only when public
opinion is ignored that the managers forget the "elementary rules" that
all sensible people respect. Like what teacher in a classroom would ever
think seriously about education as a "race to the top?" Or like "no
child left behind?" Hell, as one of my students at BSU pointed out to me
in class last week, the purpose of education as we practice it is to
leave children behind! Some go to Yale and some to to Assumption! What
sensible person would ever declare war on a "tactic," that is,
terrorism? What sensible person would ever think that we can modernize a
place like Afghanistan? Only a Harvard grad could think up something
like that! Or an Assumption grad who aspires to be like the Harvard
grad!

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Some excerpts from Al Jazeera. Can you imagine what would happen in this
country were a foreign nation to fly drones over our territory and were to kill
24 soldiers of ours by mistake? I dare say, we would not be as restrained as
the Pakistanis are being. They boycotted a meeting we wanted them to attend. If
it happened to the U.S. we would bomb such a meeting!

"Imran Khan, Pakistan's cricket-great-turned-politician and the chairman of
the Tehreek-e-Insaf party (Movement for Justice), has led around 6,000
protesters in Karachi demanding an end to US drone strikes on Pakistani soil.

"Thousands of anti-US protesters had gathered since Saturday near the port of
Pakistan's largest city Karachi to stage a two-day sit-in against
what they regard as violations of Pakistan's territory by US and NATO forces.

""Khan called for the blocking
of NATO's supply line to put a stop to the unpopular drone attacks which
are carried out mainly in Pakistan's tribal regions, where al-Qaeda and Taliban
fighters are believed to be based.

US-Pakistani relations are at a low point over the unilateral American
raid that killed Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad.

""Pakistan is angry that it was not told in advance of the raid and says it did
not know that the al-Qaeda chief was hiding in the area.

In the wake of the operation in which Bin Laden was killed, Pakistan's
parliament demanded that the US stop its missile strikes and drone attacks,
warning that it may cut off the supply route into Afghanistan altogether if the
attacks do not end.'Pakistan complicit'

"Dawn, Pakistan's leading
English daily, reported that Khan said that the "war on terror" is
not Pakistan's war and it was harming the country's integrity, and that drone
and other such attacks were breeding terrorism."

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Here are the words of a former
colleague of mine, trying his best to defend one of his heroes, Raymond Aron,
from the charge that, like so many others, he, Aron, failed to see that his
anti-Communism was more than a bit rabid. According to this former colleague,
Aron understood “once events occurred it was tempting for our contemporaries to
assume that those events were somehow inevitable all along. This temptation was
present both during the Cold War and afterwards.” [Daniel Mahoney, The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal
Order, p. 176] The cold warriors, those who according to Mahoney “resisted
the totalitarian temptation….[were] later criticized for wasting their time
fighting a movement that was…destined to collapse.” [ibid.] And then Mahoney
characterizes those who dissent from this viewpoint as deserving of Aron’s
“rebuke” for their “cowardice and abstention by historical detachment.” [ibid]
So, if one disagrees with Mahoney’s and Aron’s arguments it must be due to a
moral failing because, apparently, any disagreement is patently foolish.

Well, there is a wonderful essay
written by George Orwell entitled James
Burnham and the Managerial Revolution wherein Orwell comments on the
tendencies of intellectuals, of managers, of professors and other “thinkers” to
confuse current trends with future trends. And here is a passage most relevant
to Mahoney’s argument:

“Towards the end of the essay Burnham
compares Stalin with
those semi-mythical heroes, like Moses or Asoka, who embody in themselves
a whole epoch, and can justly be credited with feats that they did not
actually perform. In writing of Soviet foreign policy and its supposed
objectives, he touches an even more mystical note:

“’Starting from the magnetic core of the Eurasian heartland, the Soviet
power, like the reality of the One of Neo-Platonism overflowing in the
descending series of the emanative progression, flows outward, west into
Europe, south into the Near East, east into China, already lapping the
shores of the Atlantic, the Yellow and China Seas, the Mediterranean, and
the Persian Gulf. As the undifferentiated One, in its progression,
descends through the stages of Mind, Soul, and Matter, and then through
its fatal Return back to itself; so does the Soviet power, emanating from
the integrally totalitarian centre, proceed outwards by Absorption (the
Baltics, Bessarabia, Bukovina, East Poland), Domination (Finland, the
Balkans, Mongolia, North China and, tomorrow, Germany), Orienting
Influence (Italy, France, Turkey, Iran, Central and south China. . .),
until it is dissipated in MH ON, the outer material sphere, beyond the
Eurasian boundaries, of momentary Appeasement and Infiltration (England,
the United States).”

And
then Orwell continues as follows:

“It will be seen that at each point
Burnham is predicting A CONTINUATION
OF THE THING THAT IS HAPPENING. Now the tendency to do this is not simply
a bad habit, like inaccuracy or exaggeration, which one can correct by
taking thought. It is a major mental disease, and its roots lie partly in
cowardice and partly in the worship of power, which is not fully
separable from cowardice…Power worship blurs political judgement because it
leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue.
Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.”

Aron’s
anti-Communism could be seen then as merely an illustration of what Orwell
labels here “a major mental disease,” a dis-ease that afflicts managerial
types, intellectual types, professorial types because they engage in “the
worship of power.” And for Orwell, the or one antidote to this dis-ease is
democracy:

“Fortunately the "managers"
are not so invincible as Burnham believes. It
is curious how persistently, in THE MANAGERIAL REVOLUTION, he ignores the
advantages, military as well as social, enjoyed by a democratic country….The
immediate cause of the German defeat was the unheard-of folly of attacking the
USSR while Britain was still undefeated and America was manifestly getting
ready to fight. Mistakes of this
magnitude can only be made, or at any rate they are most likely to be made, in
countries where public opinion has no power. So long as the common man can get a hearing, such elementary rules as not fighting all
your enemies simultaneously are less likely to be violated.” [Emphasis
added.]

For
Orwell, it is not “the common man” who is governed by unrestrained passion so
much as it is the intelligentsia. And, after all, this makes a certain amount
of sense because “common men” are, willy nilly, more aware that the limitations
imposed on human beings are inescapable. “Common men” do not dwell in “ivory
towers,” entertaining “big theories” because they don’t have the time. What “common
man” would ever think up something like a “war of terrorism” and think that
such an undertaking stood any chance of success? It is the common men who want
one day to be pretty much like other days, who want to be secure in their
neighborhoods, who want to be paid a livable wage earned at a decent job and
little more. The managerial types look
into the future and see nirvana – thanks of course to them – while the common
man knows that “in the long run we are all dead.” As I heard said once: City
planners generally don’t provide cemeteries in their planned cities!

In
brief, one need not be a coward or historically detached to question Aron’s
anti-Communism. One simply might be “common.” One might simply need some "common sense."

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

“Senate Democrats said Monday that they would try for the fifth time in two
months to raise taxes on top earners to pay for legislation that would reduce Social Security payroll taxes,
as President Obama sought to keep
Congressional Republicans on the defensive, asserting that their intransigence
could cause a tax increase for tens of millions of American workers.

“With
Republican and Democratic leaders deadlocked over the issue in both chambers,
two senators offered a bipartisan compromise that they said could help break
the impasse before Congress adjourns for the year.

“The proposal, devised by Senators Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and
Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, would extend the current payroll tax
cut for employees and reduce the employer’s share of the payroll tax as well.
It would also provide additional money for highways, bridges and other
job-creating transportation projects.

“It would offset the cost with a 2 percent surtax on income in excess of $1
million a year, but would carve out protection for many small-business owners
who report business income on their personal tax returns.

“One of the primary objections to a surtax on very wealthy people has been
its impact on small business,” said Ms. Collins, the only Republican who
crossed the aisle and voted to take up the Democrats’ payroll tax bill last
week. “That concern resonated with me. The fact that we have been able, in a
bipartisan way, to come up with a means of protecting small businesses is
potentially a breakthrough.” [If no one thought of this
previously, it is because they did not want to think of it! “Breakthrough?”
Yes, if you are a mental midget!]

“Mrs. McCaskill said the fact of a bipartisan agreement on the explosive
issue of taxes was remarkable — “a huge part of the battle right now.” From the
New York Times, December 5, 2011

You know, it is always hard to understand just what
is happening in D.C. and this is not, for me, unintentional. While our
politicians like to look like they are incompetent, they are not. In fact, they
are very competent, only they are competent at hiding what it is they are
actually doing. They are like magicians and for anyone interested there is a
wonderful novel by Tim O’Brien entitled In
The Lake of the Woods that enlightened me to this dimension of politics and
politicians. The protagonist is a man named John Wade, who has taught himself
magic and, when he goes to Vietnam, his fellow soldiers nickname “the
Sorcerer.” And indeed he is as he can even make whole villages disappear! And
this got me thinking: Isn’t this what politicians sell us all of the time,
“magic?” “Hey, elect me and I will make poverty, drug use, left behind
children, crime, illiteracy, racism, sexism…..disappear! I am a magician; I am
the Sorcerer!”

Of course, this is not what our politicians are
really doing. For O’Brien, they are playing out their “private issues” in the
public arena, searching for love and affection, perhaps even redemption. I
suspect that while this is true, it is not the whole story. They are also
preserving the status quo, which means preserving above all else their own
power and privileges, and the power and privileges of those who share them and,
hence, understand them. Incompetence is more forgivable than manipulation for
self-interested reasons and for the well-off and, as a result, our politicians
don’t mind looking incompetent. [Ronald Reagan was a master at this magic show.
“Golly gee, I did not suspect those Marines would get attacked!” Even Bobby
Kennedy played at this game: “Gee, why did my brother, Jack, get killed? I
didn’t realize that if you try to kill others they might try to kill you. I am
so sorry!”]

The problematic phenomenon in D.C. is not
incompetence; it is oligarchy, a carefully nurtured and concealed oligarchy.
And one that treats us as if we were mushrooms: We are kept in the dark and fed
shit!

Monday, December 5, 2011

I am
listening to a CD book, Brothers in Arms,
as I drive back and forth to Bridgewater State University, a book about Bobby and
Jack Kennedy and Fidel and Raul Castro. There isn’t much in the book about
Raul. But many stories are told, not all of them true I would imagine but one
stood out today. After JFK had been killed and his body transported back to
D.C., Bobby was heard to cry out, when alone in his room, “Why? Oh, God why?”

Well,
Bobby, there is a reason why: Namely, that you and Jack thought you could kill
Castro and destroy his revolution and you played fast and loose in order to get
this done. Several times you and Jack tried to have Fidel killed, thinking it
necessary to “fight fire with fire.” What you forgot is that when you play with
fire, you can and probably will, eventually, get burned. There is no mystery
here, Bobby, no reason to try to plumb the depths of some divine plan. It was
tit for tat and Fidel “said,” as it were, along with Mae West: “Well, if you
are going to go tit for tat with me, you better have a lot tat!” Or as Willie
Nelson sings: “Just a little old fashioned justice going round; It really ain’t
hard to understand, if you’re gonna dance you gotta pay the band. Just a little
old fashioned justice going round.”

But there
is something more to this drama, a something that plays itself out in American
politics frequently. In my last post, on Aristotle and his understanding of the
political world, I argued that the fact that there is no regime, no political
order, where all govern – and, hence, no policies that can comprehend the good
of everyone – reflects another fact, viz., that there is no comprehensive good
that is available to human beings. Even or especially what many deem to be the
“highest good,” a life of philosophy, is not available to all and, in fact, is
not even good for all. Hence, let us say that aristocracy, literally the rule
of the best, is the best regime – an argument attributed to Aristotle all the
time but of which I am skeptical. But even if this is so, this regime is not
best for everyone; in fact, it may not even be good for everyone. [Aristotle
indicates that he thought that there would be slavery even in the best regime.]

Why is this
important and what does it have to do with fanaticism? Well, it seems to me
that fanaticism is only possible to the extent that one thinks that there is a
good that is comprehensive; that is, that there is a good that is good for all
human beings all the time everywhere. It is something like this – I hesitate to
call it a “thought” – that makes it possible for human beings to think that
they can get to the good through less than good means, even through bloody and
inhuman means. If you seriously believe, for example, that American values are
universal, good for all people everywhere all the time, then it is possible for
you to endorse or even engage in brutality for the sake of universalizing these
values. Fanaticism feeds on a “commitment” to what is perceived to be “the good,”
that is, “the good” which is good for all everywhere. “We will pay any price,
bear any burden,” as JFK said, to save the world. But is this not fanaticism?
And isn’t it fanaticism to declare a desire to rid the world of evil or of “the
axis of evil?”

I recently
read a book entitled Socratic Citizenship
in which the author argues that Socrates’ conception of citizenship of the best
kind did not involve an intense commitment to a political order or to political
action. Rather, Socrates thought that the best kind of citizenship was of a
restraining character, that the best citizens were those who encouraged the
powers that be to “slow down,” to deliberate, to think before acting. From this
it might be said that Socrates was convinced that all politics, all policies,
all political actions involved, always and everywhere, injustice. The larger
the political action, the more comprehensive the policies pursued, the greater the
injustice. And, for Socrates, human beings need to avoid, first and foremost,
committing injustices because for him committing an injustice was worse than being
treated unjustly.

Fanaticism
is concomitant with political life because all political actions are oriented
toward the good. Hence, to combat fanaticism successfully requires more than
political action. Human beings have to come to understand the importance of
limits and this is an understanding that is not easily taught in the political
arena. The Kennedy’s, Bobby and Jack, never learned the importance of limits
and, as a result, they became fanatics – just like Fidel and Raul. And it was
this fanaticism that led, not surprisingly, to their demise. “It really ain’t
hard to understand: if you’re gonna dance, you gotta pay the band. Just a
little old fashioned karma comin’ down.”

Friday, December 2, 2011

I was
educated by men who were convinced that Aristotle was an important source for
understanding politics and political life. However, the lessons that they drew
from Aristotle were (a) his teaching, allegedly, on the innate inequality of
human beings, with some human beings labeled as superior and others labeled
inferior. Of course, we did not dispute this argument because we just assumed
that we were among the superior human beings. Then, another Aristotelian lesson
was that politics, at its best, was about virtue and the inculcation of virtue
by means of an aristocratic “government.” Again, because we just assumed we
were the virtuous ones, we did not dispute this argument too readily, if at
all.

Now, I must
say that I still agree with the idea that Aristotle is indispensable for
understanding politics but for different reasons than those stated above. First,
Aristotle is clear that all forms of political rule are defective or partial.
That is, according to Aristotle’s famous scheme of “regimes” there are six
regimes, that is, pairs of regimes led by the one, the few, or the many. Note
should be taken that for Aristotle, all or “the people” as we like to say never rule! There is no such thing as
the rule of all or of “the people,” for Aristotle. All forms of rule are
partial, therefore, and in that sense defective because when push comes to
shove, as it always does, those with power will rule for the their own benefit
because they cannot rule for the benefit of all. Aristotle makes it clear then
that there is no such phenomenon as rule for the benefit of all. And I believe
this means, ultimately, that there is no good that is comprehensive, that is,
good equally for all human beings. And this Greek is said by many to be an
“idealist.” Some “idealist.” Even “the good” is partial.

Secondly,
Aristotle makes it clear that the most common regimes are oligarchy and
democracy; that is, the rule of the few rich or the rule of the many not rich.
And he also makes clear that political life is, by and large, characterized by
vibrations or vacillations between these two opposed and competing political
ways of being. Sometimes the few rich hold sway and other times the many not
rich hold sway. And this is the stuff of politics as most human beings
experience it. So, for Aristotle, our distinction between “liberals” and
“conservatives,” which we take to be the most fundamental of political
divisions, is obfuscating, and perhaps intentionally so. Think about it. What
better way to try to escape the constant vibrations, the constant battles between the rich and the not rich than to replace
this dichotomy with another “dichotomy,” one that directs our attention away
from the rich-not rich division, a division which easily leads to violet
disagreements? And if this disguise or displacement leads, most times, to the
rule of the rich or the better off, what is the harm in that? After all, isn’t
it the rich, the better off, who should control the levers of power? Are they
not the responsible parties, the mature ones, the ones who are not governed by
envy? And besides, even if they are governed by greed, doesn’t “greed work?”

But if
Aristotle’s analysis of political life is correct, then it must be said that
our political categories merely disguise
without displacing the most basic of political divisions, that of the few
rich and the many not rich. Some might think this argument is confirmed by the
intensity with which some contest anyone who seems to talk about “class” as if
it were the motivating force of our politics. The intensity of the opposition
to such talk reflects an awareness, maybe only unconscious, that such talk
threatens to upset “the apple cart,” as it were, by laying bare the real but
suppressed and disguised conflict that is going on in our – and indeed in every
– political society. Such talk is dangerous, just as is talk that no good in
comprehensive in the sense of being able to satisfy or fulfill all human
beings. But is this not what the argument that the supreme good is accessible
only to a few implies?

So, as I
see it, Aristotle’s politics, his analysis of political life is still relevant.
But it is also dangerous, even subversive of our current way of being
political. This is not a lesson I was taught with sufficient clarity. Or
perhaps I was, only it took me some time to discover or uncover the lessons
Aristotle would teach us.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

I love to read American history because (a) I learn things that I was not taught in school and (b) I am often startled anew by the capacity of our government for duplicity. I am reading two books right now, one entitled Overthrow and the other entitled Instruments of Statecraft, both of which are about the United States’ practice of “unconventional warfare” or the “covert variety” in various places in the world. Without boring you with two much detail, here is an example of what I have learned.

This example is from the book, Instruments of Statecraft, by Michael McClintock.
Basically, what startled me was our government’s policy in the Philippines after the Japanese had occupied those islands at the start of World War II. Of course, resistance movements arose among the Filipino people and there were even “stay behinds” – that is, American soldiers who stayed behind after the Japanese took over – who were involved with these resistance fighters. However, what was startling was that the American government refused to support those resistance groups, especially those called the Huks, who were most eager to fight the Japanese. The government, that is, the American government limited its support to those groups which did not threaten the “elite,” that is, the wealthy land owners, among the Filipinos even though this elite was, generally and broadly speaking, cooperating with the Japanese in the suppression of their fellow countrymen. This elite had the status of collaborators but was, nonetheless, protected by the policy of the American government, a policy that included a prohibition on attacking those Filipinos who were collaborating with the Japs. Of course, such a policy protected the Japanese as well as the elite Filipinos. And after the war was over, it was the collaborators who were rewarded with positions of power and not the Huk. Why not the Huk? Because it was feared that they were “communists.” In fact, some of the Huk were massacred with the approval and assistance of the United States.

Now, think about it. American policy, geared to protecting the elite of the Philippines because of the fear of communism, protected the Japanese who had occupied these islands as part of their war against the United States. And these same Japanese would be the ones killing Americans who were going to retake the Philippines! So, in essence, American policy was willing to sacrifice the lives of its own soldiers in order to protect the established order, both social and economic, in the Philippines! This strikes me as duplicitous. In fact, it strikes me as criminal. And you never read about this in your history books.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Here is a quote from
an article in Al Jazeera, that says all that needs be said. Smoke and mirrors,
that is about the crux of our politics today.

“The point is that
the American people are being lied to about the deficit and their choices for
fixing it (or not fixing it). And this dishonest campaign is being led by
people with a long-standing animus towards the social safety net, who are
seizing this moment of confusion to push through something without the
permission of the people. This bait-and-switch is happening because financial
and political elites insist on demanding "sacrifice" from ordinary
people in order to preserve an unsustainable financial system, not an
unsustainable debt.”

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

OK, so it
is being trumpeted everywhere, the Supercommittee has “failed.” In the
Worcester Telegram and Gazette, the headline is “Super frustration, super failure.” The people on the Supercommittee
could not reach an agreement over what to do about the budget and this is,
everyone agrees, a failure, even a failure of overwhelming significance.

But it is
worthwhile, as it always is, to question the conventional wisdom, here, that
this result represents a “failure.” In the first place, this seems slightly
illogical to me, to conclude that the lack of an agreement is a failure, at
least from the point of view of the members of the committee. They know that
public opinion of them and of the government is at an all time low. So, why
would they then tolerate such a result? Surely it would have been possible to
reach some kind of an agreement and, from the public response, almost any kind
of agreement would have been better than no agreement.

Ah, but isn’t
that the point? Think about it: Conventionally speaking, there is this “Supercommittee”
– so called – convened for the purpose of finding that apparently elusive “middle”
which would provide some kind of solution, partial or not, of our current
budgetary “problems.” On this Supercommittee are, apparently, people who know
what they are doing and who are, allegedly, committed to serving the public
interest, the common good, above all else. Now, however, we are “told” that
even the people on this Supercommittee cannot reach an agreement about what to
do and what are we to conclude? My bet is that what we will be told to conclude
is that our problems are so huge, so complex, so intractable that it will
require the most serious kind of effort to “solve” them. Because, after all,
the Supercommittee couldn’t solve them and if the Supercommittee cannot solve them then they must be immense.

For me,
this is all a set-up and was a set-up since the creation of this Supercommittee. In fact, for me it is
not too much to say that this committee was created for the purpose of “failing”
because by failing the Supercommittee
has cleared the decks for policies that will serve the few at the expense of the
many but will surely be presented to us as our “last, best hope.” The logic
will be: “Hey, no one wants to do these things but what choice do we have? Even
the Supercommittee could not agree!
We have no choices here, people. We all have to sacrifice.”

We have problems whose solutions will be provided by the
government or other large, bureaucratic institutions like universities,
corporations, or even churches that rely on experts/specialists who possess
expertise, are rational and skillful, being neither emotional nor caring and who
will formulate policies to be implemented by other specialists or experts and
then evaluated by even other specialists or experts.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

This is a review of a
book I just “discovered” reading another book that should be a must for anyone
interested in how our political system actually works,that is, not as it works in the dreams of
those who like movies like “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington” or TV shows like “The
West Wing.” This other book is Ideal
Illusions: How the US Government Co-Opted Human Rights, by James Peck. You
can find this review on Amazon if you type in Michael McClintock and look for
his book, Instruments of Statecraft.

"Instruments of
Statecraft" is a powerful and significant book that unveils how US
counterinsurgency doctrine was consciously modelled on the practices and
achievements of World War II fascism. In his review of US Army manuals of the
1950s, author Michael McClintock notes that there is a frightening similarity
between the Nazi's perception of world politics and America's behavior in the
Cold War.

“McClintock
reveals how the US has undertaken the worldwide task of removing anti-fascist
resistance and other criminals (labelled "Communists" or
"terrorists") from the theatre of national and international
politics.

“McClintock
points out that in the struggle against "Partisan Communism" the
killing of anyone furnishing aid or comfort, directly or indirectly, to such
partisans, or any person withholding information on partisans, was well within
the provisions of acceptable superpower behavior.

“McClintock
shows how the policies advocated by Kennedy's dovish advisors, and standard US
practice in Central America were founded on the fundamental state terrorist
policy of the utility of "evacuation of all natives from partisan-infested
areas and the destruction of all farms, villages, and buildings in the areas
following the evacuations" - standard US procedure in South Vietnam, for
example. Engaging, illuminating and riveting,"Instruments of
Statecraft" is a must-read for blind-faith patriots everywhere. “

Friday, November 18, 2011

This
is from an exchange on Facebook with a former student who likes to throw the
word “nihilism” around to describe those with whom he disagrees. And it raised
for me the issue of what the political problem actually is. That is, is that
problem the problem of “nihilism” or what might be called “conventionalism?” It
is often said that political philosophy made its appearance only when the
distinction between the conventional and the natural was recognized and taken
seriously.This would suggest that the
political phenomenon that is most common and, hence, most problematic is conventionalism,
that is, the confusion of what is conventional with what is natural [or best].

The former student
wrote, regarding his stay in France:

"Anyways, I'm not sure where I am now-
what the Tradition would say France represents. Skepticism, nihilism... hell?
Not sure..."

I wrote in response:

“You know what amazes
me? That so many take "nihilism" as an attitude that is adopted quite
easily, that it is seen as almost "natural," that it is what human
beings adopt unless corrected by some "Tradition," whether the
Catholic Tradition or the Great Books Tradition. Nihilism is not the natural
state of human beings to say the least. For human beings to arrive at nihilism
requires an effort, even a great effort. The "political/human"
problem is not nihilism but conventionalism, whether that conventionalism
appears as nationalism or patriotism.”

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Quotations from a book entitled Ideal Illusions: How the U.S. Government Co-Opted Human Rights, by
James Peck.

“…the rise of the American human rights movement since the
1970s has coincided with an unprecedented increase in inequality, with brutal wars
of occupation, and with a determination to establish American preeminence via
the greatest concentration military power in history….In the end, the movement
must decide: Can it find a way to truly confront the abusive operations of
wealth and power in all their many forms? Or will it consent to being a weapon
of privileged power seeking to protect it interests – and its conscience?” [ p.
9 ]